Stories Beyond Popular Appeal: The 5th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

SPACE November 2025 (No. 696) 

 

The 5th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism is currently taking place in sites across central Seoul, including Songhyeon Green Plaza, Gwanghwamun Square, and the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture. Opening on the 26th of September, this year’s Biennale carries the theme ‘Radically More Human’. Thomas Heatherwick (director, Heatherwick Studio), general director of the Biennale, focuses on the architectural façade as a key strategy in creating cities that feel more human. SPACE examines how this design and curatorial idea is being realised in the planning and execution of the exhibitions, while also reflecting on the challenges and limitations revealed in an event that places ‘popularity’ as its foremost concern.

 

 

The Walls of Public Life visible beyond the Humanise Wall​. ©Bang Yukyung 

 

 

Now in its fifth edition, the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (hereinafter the Seoul Biennale) drew major attention from the outset when Thomas Heatherwick, one of Britain’s leading architects and designers, was appointed as general director. The announcement was met with both anticipation and concern; anticipation at how a creator known for his inventive and engaging formal language might infuse Seoul with a new energy, and concern that the event could devolve into a one-off spectacle built on the fame of a star architect. In fact, Heatherwick was commissioned as general director in June 2024, shortly after winning International Design Competition for the Nodeul Global Art Island. Setting aside the controversy surrounding that competition within the architectural community (covered in SPACE Nos. 677, 680, 684), questions still lingered over whether he could, within such a short period, fully grasp and interpret the urban and architectural context of Seoul in order to curate an exhibition on this scale. 

 

The theme of this year’s Seoul Biennale, ‘Radically More Human’, is also a question that Thomas Heatherwick has long pursued. In essence, it suggests that architecture which feels attractive to people is, by nature, human-centred architecture. In the exhibition preface, Heatherwick stated that through the Biennale he sought to ‘explore how the façades of buildings affect society as a whole, and how deeply architecture is connected to our emotions.’ This perspective is also fully reflected in his book HUMANISE (2023), published in Korea in 2024. The book opens with an image of Heatherwick holding a volume that features a photograph of Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Milà, highlighting his fascination with its sculptural and crafted exterior—a striking contrast to the monotony of flat, modernist buildings. He writes that façades imbued with craftsmanship ‘have provided immeasurable joy to hundreds of millions of passersby.’ If his vision of humanistic architecture unfolds through the medium of ‘the building’s surface that moves human emotion’, then the key to viewing this Biennale lies in observing how that message takes form and expression within the context of Seoul—and how it engages the public across different media and modes of experience. 

 

 

General director Thomas Heatherwick presenting at the opening ceremony​. Image courtesy of Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 

 

 

The exhibition is composed of four main sections: the Thematic Exhibition, the Cities Exhibition, the Seoul Exhibition, and the Global Studios. Leading the programme, Thomas Heatherwick curated the Thematic Exhibition, which mainly unfolds across two parts: Humanise Wall and Walls of Public Life at Songhyeon Green Plaza (hereinafter Songhyeon Plaza). The Humanise Wall, serving as the centrepiece of this Biennale, takes the form of a ‘wall’, a symbolic architectural element that defines the façade of buildings. Measuring 90m in length and 16m in height, the steel-framed structure is clad with 1,428 steel panels layered like scales. The central portion twists like a ribbon, creating a circular opening that connects the inner and outer spaces of Songhyeon Plaza, where the exhibition is held. Heatherwick envisioned this wall – imbued with the message of human-centred urban architecture – as a communicative threshold that sparks dialogue and catalyses social change. Beyond the Humanise Wall, numerous walls rise across the lawn inside the park. This section, titled Walls of Public Life, features a series of creative façade mock-ups, each measuring 2.4m-wide and 4.8m-high, differentiated by materials, textures, and patterns. The 24 participating teams include professionals from a range of disciplines—writers, chefs, jewellery designers, fashion designers, and architects from both Korea and abroad. Responding to the general director’s request to ‘create façades that feel intriguing and engaging’, the participants employed a diverse palette of materials and combinations, including water, wood, brick, clay, mold, fabric, concrete, plastic, and steel.However, what stood out most at the exhibition site was not the individuality or narrative of each work, but rather the overall format and spatial composition of the Thematic Exhibition itself. In the wide open-air setting, a monumental structure and the (relatively) smaller installations faced each other from a measured distance. Visitors were drawn to the distinctive form of the Humanise Wall, strolling along its surfaces both inside and out, reading the phrases inscribed on the steel panels, or taking photographs. Yet as a medium for reading and ‘communicating’ messages, the wall felt almost too vast. Up close, the text was difficult to take in without craning one’s neck, and the sunlight reflected off the metal surface was dazzling; viewed from afar, the content became unreadable, leaving only the sleek, streamlined structure to be perceived. During the opening forum, Heatherwick explained that the Humanise Wall stemmed from his twisting-wall concept 26 years ago, for Blackburn station in northern England, and he even shared an old sketch from that time. Perhaps the tension lies between that charming line drawing and its present incarnation as a monumental object—between a conceptual idea and its overwhelming physical realisation.

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Overall view of the Songhyeon Green Plaza where the Thematic Exhibition is being held​. ©Bang Yukyung 

 

 

The same sense of disconnect between form and content was evident in the Walls of Public Life section. Visitors stopped to take photos in front of the walls or to read the descriptions written on their reverse, but such engagement was fleeting. Standing in the middle of a vast open field, the walls functioned less as spatial installations to be experienced and more as flat images—largely consumed as backdrops for social media snapshots. One cannot help but wonder why, in such an expansive setting, the works were constrained by the fixed format of a ‘single-surfaced wall’ of a prescribed size. From the scale of the plaza, the walls appear small, yet in reality they are not; their ambiguous spacing prevents each element from being appreciated as an independent work. Despite the presence of 24 walls, there seems to be little relational consideration for how they might interact or engage in a creative dialogue with one another. The reverse sides of the walls, meanwhile, were treated simply as plain panels listing artwork information and design intent.The remaining exhibitions were mainly held at the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture. The Cities Exhibition and the Seoul Exhibition, both located on the spacious third basement floor, are connected by a single glass wall, with the entire area divided by a sheer fabric curtains. In the Cities Exhibition, 25 international projects known for their attractive façades are introduced. The exhibition space is organised in a grid pattern, with curtains hanging above, creating the impression of walking through a neatly arranged city block lined with building elevations. Given the limited conditions for experiencing actual façades, printing them at full scale onto curtains and reconstructing them as a vertical spatial experience can be seen as a strategic choice. By contrast, the Seoul Exhibition, held in the adjacent gallery with a lower ceiling, presents major projects representing Seoul’s urban and architectural policies. It offers a distinctly different spatial experience through the use of fixed steel-panel walls, LED video screens, and horizontally sliding curtains. However, apart from such exhibition formats and spatial composition strategies, both exhibitions, in terms of content, reveal a lack of depth.

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Exhibition view of Walls of Public Life​. ©Bang Yukyung 

 

 

In the case of the Cities Exhibition, brief texts, photographs, and drawings related to each building were arranged along the floor in a plinth-like format, yet the content leaned towards general overviews rather than detailed explanations or careful analyses aligned with the exhibition’s theme. The Seoul Exhibition, which was organised based on a project list preselected by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, largely consisted of unbuilt works; as a result, it relied on renderings and aerial perspectives, making it difficult for viewers to experience the architectural reality of each project. In this way, both exhibitions compressed the discussion of building façades into a series of images printed on curtains, reducing what could have been meaningful inquiries into the influence or implications of individual buildings within urban space to momentary spatial impressions. Despite being curated under a shared theme, they fell short of revealing, through deeper analysis, any substantive connection or expansion between the Seoul projects and those from abroad—an omission that feels particularly regrettable when recalling the research-based exhibitions of previous Biennales.The Seoul Biennale was launched in 2017 with the stated goal of ‘examining the pressing issues of global cities and seeking alternative solutions through the platform of Seoul’. Without an independent foundation or permanent operating body, it has been sustained through the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, beginning with the ambitious vision of ‘providing a forum where diverse actors – experts, public institutions, and citizens – can come together to envision the future of Seoul’. Let us return to the beginning. In this Biennale, who put forward the idea of ‘transforming the dull façades of buildings to create more attractive cities’, and where can we find Seoul’s own story? What, in concrete terms, constitutes an attractive façade? And has the discussion on corresponding architectural alternatives advanced to a level that can persuade not only the general public but also professionals and policymakers alike?​

 

 

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Exhibition view of the Cities Exhibition at the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture​. ©Bang Yukyung 

 

 

This critical awareness was also recognised from within. Maya West, a Korean-born artist who was invited to participate in Creative Communities Project, part of the Thematic Exhibition, and presented ‘Living Together in the World’ with Melody Song, remarked that ‘coming to a divided nation and blithely building a huge wall shows a profound lack of judgment and taste’, criticising Thomas Heatherwick for simply imposing his own narrative without any meaningful engagement with Korea or Seoul.^▼1 Similarly, Elliot Woods, a member of the Seoul-based art and technology duo Kimchi and Chips, who participated in the previous Seoul Biennale and presented the media wall Reworld at Songhyeon Plaza, pointed out that considering the site’s history – a space closed to the public for 110 years under Japanese and later U.S. control before finally reopening in 2022 – the choice of a ‘wall’ as a central motif was profoundly inappropriate.^▼2Since the Biennale opened, a ‘K-Walls of Public Life’ Challenge (#kwallchallen) has been circulating on Instagram among young Korean architects in their twenties and thirties. HYPERSPANDREL (principal, Chon Jaewoo) initiated the challenge by posting a parody work titled Gae-drip Wall (it means pun wall), mimicking the Humanise Wall and Walls of Public Life. In the rendering, an ordinary exposed-concrete wall stands with a sign in front of it, reading, ‘If you find this wall boring, you probably have a small w*ener.’ It serves both as a satire of the exhibition’s concept and format, and as an example of alternative strategies emerging outside the Biennale. By proposing fictional projects, these architects are, paradoxically, carving out a real presence in the professional landscape—perhaps embodying the very humour-driven, attractive architecture that Thomas Heatherwick himself advocates.​

 

 

 

Exhibition view of the Seoul Exhibition​. Image courtesy of Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 

 

 

Meanwhile, the Global Studios programme, which collects a diverse range of voices on cities and architecture and visualises them through AI analysis, though still in its early stages, represents an attempt to expand civic engagement online. It offers an opportunity to reconsider how ordinary people perceive and experience everyday urban spaces, such as apartment complexes that architects too readily dismiss as monotonous. The interactive media wall showcasing this project was placed quietly in a corner of the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture, making its presence appear rather subdued. Still, it raises the question of whether the Seoul Biennale should define its future direction on the foundation of such experimentation and discovery, using rapidly evolving technologies to gather public opinions and archive discussions about the city.The Seoul Biennale, curated under the ambitious vision of Thomas Heatherwick, ultimately opened as an event focused on communication that is easy, immediate, and sensory. Yet in doing so, it fell short of the minimum depth of discourse that engagements with architecture and urbanism demand. At its core, Heatherwick’s message echoes as a distant voice, detached from the reality of Seoul, and the Biennale struggled to find the appropriate medium and expression to balance popularity and professionalism. Even so, upon reflection, its significance may lie in the questions it leaves behind: what defines human-centred space and architecture in today’s desolate urban environment, and what form should an architectural exhibition or city-scale biennale take to balance public appeal with critical depth?​

 

 

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​1 Christina Yao, ‘Seoul creatives brand Heatherwick’s Humanise Wall “a profound lack of judgment”’, Dezeen 3 Oct. 2025, https://www.dezeen.com/2025/10/03/heatherwick-humanise-wall-seoul-biennale/, accessed 17 Oct. 2025.

2 Ibid.​

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